Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us for the presentation of 2024 results, and for sure also for the outlook for 2025. I'm very pleased to be with you today and to be also with Félicie Burelle, our Managing Director. Bonjour, Félicie. And Stéphanie Laval, VP Investor Relations. Bonjour, Stéphanie. We will go through, for sure, the numbers. We will start, first of all, with an executive summary about what were the main highlights of 2024 for the company. We want to spend a bit of time as well with you about our strategy, because the strong results of the group are also the results of our strategy we have been working on since the last years. And for sure, we will finish with the outlook for 2025 before handing over to you for the traditional Q&A session.
Coming back to the executive summary, 2024 was for sure a very challenging situation on the market. We will come back to that in more detail. The market was declining by 1.2%, with a very diverse situation depending on the regions. In this very challenging environment, we have been able to achieve very strong performance, starting first of all with our revenue growth, because we are one of the few companies in Europe being able to grow in 2024, 2.8%, meaning an outperformance of 4 points.
We have not only been able to grow, but also to improve all the financial key metrics of the company, and I will come back to that later on, meaning the operating margin, meaning the free cash flow generation, and also the net result showing that we have, from one side, the right strategy, but also this capacity to adapt, to be agile, to work on our cost structure, and to improve our efficiency. And last but not least, 2024 was also a very important year for us to prepare 2025, also in terms of carbon neutrality, because we stick to our commitment to be carbon neutral in 2025 for our Scope 1 and 2, and we will also come back to that later in the presentation. Therefore, a very solid year for OPmobility in 2024.
If we go to the key financial metrics, you may remember that our commitment, our engagement, was to improve all our key performance metrics compared to 2023. It is the case. I mentioned again the outperformance of OPmobility compared to the market by 4 points. The operating margin did grow by 11.4% compared to 2023. Therefore, also a very solid performance. The net result group share also did improve by 4.2%, even if the cost of money is increasing, as everybody knows. And we have been also able, again, to generate a very high level of free cash flow, growing by 8.3% compared to 2023. Therefore, all commitments, all engagements achieved in 2024. Now, if we take a step back and if we have a look on our trajectory since 2022, why 2022? Because 2022 was the year of the acquisition of OPmobility.
It was the year where we made the acquisition of the Lighting business, but also the electrification, and you can see on this slide that since 2022, we are improving. We are improving. We are growing 23% of growth. We are also improving our operating margin by 21%. We are able to generate each year a very high level of net result group share, even if the market situation in terms of interest rate did deteriorate a lot during the last years, and also to deliver a very high level of free cash flow. That means, again, that we have a very resilient business model that we are able also to integrate new businesses. I was referring to the acquisition.
The market in the last years, you know that, but I think it's always important to take a step back to have a look on how the market is developing and how we are performing in this market. 2020 was for sure the COVID year with a very low level of production, and then the market did grow again. 2024 is the first year where the market is declining compared to the previous year. That is mainly due to the situation in Europe, mainly due to the fact that the EV penetration is not as fast as expected. That is also due to the fact that in Europe, in North America, especially in the U.S., the inventory level was pretty high in 2024, and we have seen our customers try to sell their inventories, especially at the end of 2024.
From the other side, China is still developing a lot. And you know as well that the growth of China is 90% due to the capacity of China to export either to Europe, to Russia, to the Middle East, or to South Africa, or to other countries. There is still some uncertainty in Europe with regulation, and I'm sure that we will talk about that. As mentioned before, the market was decreasing in 2024 for all of these reasons, but with a very diverse situation depending on the region. Again, you can see as a reference that since 2020, the group was able to grow by 51%, meaning outperforming the market each year. When we talk about outperformance of the market, we want to be balanced, meaning that we want to outperform the market in each region. That is also one part of the strategy of the group.
If I start with Europe, and we will go through each region later on in the presentation to give you a bit more information about our situation and our strategy by region. If we start with a region, which is the home base of OPmobility, we all know that the market in Europe is suffering a lot since a couple of years. Again, last year, a decline of the market by 5% around in terms of production, and we have been able to post a stable, slightly growing turnover, meaning that we are outperforming the market by close to five points in Europe. We are doing that by gaining market shares, basically, on the European market. Europe does represent 50% of our sales. It will be less in the future, but it remains a very strong base for the group. The second market I want to highlight is North America.
That is the growth engine of the group. You know that we are focusing a lot on North America because we do see a lot of potential for the group to continue to grow in this region. We have been able to outperform the market by 10 points last year. And as you all know, I assume you all know, I hope you all know, the U.S. became the biggest market of OPmobility in 2024. If we move now to Asia, Asia is also growing and outperforming, but the situation is for sure very diverse depending on which country in Asia. And again, I will deep dive that later on in the presentation. In China, we are underperforming the market with a diverse situation depending on the business group. And we will talk about that later on, about what we are doing also in terms of actions.
In the rest of Asia, we are strongly outperforming the market. At the end, again, Asia is also outperforming the market at OPmobility. We had many launches. I won't go through the 159 launches we had last year. The message is we have a very strong order book. You know that from the previous years. That is translating in launches. All launches we had in 2024, they were flawless, meaning no issue at OPmobility, no issue for our customers. When we talk about our capacity to gain market share in Europe or to gain market share basically with our traditional customers, that is also due to the fact that we deliver, that we never stop them, and that we are always on time with the right quality for the launches we are working on. You see some iconic cars in Europe.
We are talking a lot about the Renault 5. We decided to take the green color here. Green is hope for the volumes. But we had also some launches with Dacia, the Sandero. We had some launches in the U.S., for sure, for diverse brands. We have launched as well, that is important to mention, Lighting for the Ford Explorer, also out of Mexico, and many launches in Asia. I just want to highlight the BYD in Exterior. BYD was not a very strong customer of us for Exterior for many reasons we'll talk about. But BYD is moving to plastic tailgate and is becoming potentially our growth engine for China in the coming years. We are organized by business group. You know that. You see some key numbers.
The news compared to last year is that we have decided to bring the business groups, Exterior and Lighting, together. We had two business groups in the past. Two reasons for that. One reason is driven by the market. You know that one of the reasons why we have been investing in Lighting is because we strongly believe that in the future, the Exterior of the vehicle will integrate the Lighting differently than in the past and we are pretty successful. We do see a lot of customers being very interested to go for new kinds of Exterior parts. Félicie will talk about that later on. That means that is a demand from the market to integrate better the Lighting in the bumpers and the tailgate. Therefore, the decision we took to bring the business group together but also, the market is stable in terms of volumes.
We are permanently working on our cost base, on our cost structure, on efficiency, and bringing those two business groups together will bring synergies in terms of cost, meaning competitiveness and capacity to invest for the group to continue to develop the business. That is effective since the 1st of February 2025. I now hand over to Stéphanie, and Stéphanie will talk about our financial results with more details.
Thank you, Laurent, and good morning, everyone. So first, I will comment on the revenue. That is up plus 2% on a like-for-like basis compared to last year. If we take into account the FX effect of EUR 41 million, mainly due to the Brazilian real, the Japanese yen, this is an impact growth of plus 1.6%. If we look at all the business segments, first, Exterior and Lighting posted a revenue of minus 2% compared to last year. It is mainly due to two different trends. First one, the Exterior Business is very growing, growing a lot in Exterior, thanks to the previous order intake we took in the previous years, while the Lighting business, as expected, dropped in terms of sales, linked to the previous order intake we had before OPmobility acquired the Lighting Business.
The good news on Lighting is that if we take a step back, and the last two years, so in 2023 and 2024, combining, the Lighting business took almost EUR 3 billion of order intake, which makes us confident for the fact that we will secure revenue and it will continue to grow starting 2026. Looking at Modules, Modules is increasing. So you see the plus 12% this year. It's reaching EUR 3 billion of revenue this year. This is mainly due, of course, to the Austin plant in Texas. It is the first full year of impact of the Austin plant. I remind you that it has opened at the end of 2023, and also, Modules benefit in Europe from sales that are growing in Slovakia and Czech Republic for Volkswagen and Skoda.
Moving to Powertrain, you have the ICE activity, so the internal combustion engine activity that is going quite well despite an environment that is quite challenging. At the reverse, you have H2-Power, which is facing some delays in some order intakes, but not in order in sales, sorry. But we have people, we have a lot of contracts that let us, for now, be confident in the future. Let's comment now on the operating margin. You can see on the chart that the margin, the operating margin rate is growing, so up to 4.2%. So it's a plus 0.4 points compared to last year. The operating margin for the group is at EUR 440 million, which is up plus 11% compared to last year, which is a really good performance, while the revenue at the same period is plus 2%.
This is linked to good activity, plus a strict control we put in place on the cost, especially the structure cost. So we are very proud of this performance. If you look at the module operating margin, it's improving quite significantly compared to last year, moving from 1.6% to 2.2%. I remind you that in H2 2023, we were at 1.2%. So you can measure the initiatives put in place that have delivered starting this year in 2024. If you look overall, you can see that Modules has a margin rate that is above 2%. And I remind you that this activity is an assembly activity, so with margins that are lower of the average of the group, but it's progressing, but it's low capital-intensive activity.
While when we combine the other activities, Exterior Lighting and Powertrain, we posted an operating margin of 5%, which is improving of 0.4 points compared to last year. So a very good performance coming from all the segments. If we now look at the bottom of the P&L, so I was mentioning the operating margin that is up 45 million EUR compared to last year. It is mostly offsetting the rise in the financial expenses and the rise in the income tax. So at the end, the net result is increasing by 4% compared to last year, which is a good performance. Non-recurring items are stable year on year, and most of them are linked to the reorganization cost and currency effect. The reorganization cost amounted to roughly 50% of the total of the non-recurring items.
On the financial results, that is linked, that is increasing, of course, this year, but it was expected. It is mainly due to higher interest rates, plus the bond we issued beginning of the year of EUR 500 million. Income tax represents 0.7% of the revenue, which is almost stable compared to last year. It is, of course, the rise in the income tax this year in terms of million euros is linked, of course, to higher results we had this year. If we now comment on the free cash flow, I would like to highlight the fact that it's another year of strong generation of free cash flow, which is one of the key highlights to be mentioned for 2024. The free cash flow of EUR 246 million is up plus 8% compared to last year.
If we exclude the real estate disposals for EUR 54 million we had last year, we are plus 42% compared to last year. So a very strong performance on the operational free cash flow. You can see that we have controlled CapEx at 4.8% of the total revenue, which is fully in line with our capital allocation framework to have CapEx that are not above 5% of our revenue. It lets us invest in key regions or key activities while controlling when we have some volumes that are up and down. The working cap also has a positive contribution of plus EUR 42 million this year compared to plus EUR 61 million euros last year. Now moving to another topic where we are proud of is our sound financial structure. We have a net debt at the end of 2024 that is EUR 1.58 billion .
It includes two, let's say, specific elements. The first one is the payment of an interim dividend that we paid in July 2024 for EUR 35 million. It also includes EUR 10 million for the purchase of own shares that we did at the end of 2024. If we exclude those two operations, we have a drop in the net debt of minus EUR 9 million compared to last year. The good news is that the leverage ratio is stable at 1.7 times EBITDA, which is, of course, lower than the one we had two years ago. We issued some financing operations during 2024. First, we issued a bond in March 2024 for EUR 500 million while we were assessed by S&P of a double B plus and with a stable outlook. We reimbursed the bond at the end of June 2024 of EUR 500 million.
Last but not least, we did at the end of the year. It was in December, a Schuldschein of EUR 300 million. It was a success. And it will cover the issuance due in 2025 of EUR 395 million. Please note that we have no covenant on our debt and that we have available cash of EUR 500 million at the end of 2024. I will now hand over to Félicie for sustainability.
Good morning, everybody. So indeed, quick update on our sustainability roadmap, which, as you said, 2025 is an important milestone in our capacity to be fully neutral in 2050. Again, a lot of activity in 2024 to reach this first milestone to be achieved by the end of this year. We launched a specific climate school to be able to train today, as of today, 900 people and to bring more awareness on what can be achieved and obviously also what they can take back in their personal life. Here we have a bit like the same approach that we have on safety. Safety is key, obviously, because we want to have a safe environment for our people, but we also want people to embark that and bring those good practices home. And here again, it's the same approach.
We have internally 200 ambassadors, which are continuously within plants and within R&D centers, bringing this awareness across the company, which is paying because, again, I hope you have seen two days ago, we have achieved again for the second year the A grade, thanks to CDP that has awarded us again, and which is putting us in the 2% of those companies being assessed, so in terms of recognizing the roadmap that we have in place and the quality also of our reporting, and that good rank is coming a few months after, again, also improvements that we have done with EcoVadis and MSCI, so a very thorough roadmap, which will enable us, as you said, we commit, we stick to our engagement of 2025. Again, what is this engagement by the end of this year, so we will be neutral in terms of Scope 1 and 2.
How do we do that? The first key approach to that is obviously reducing our energy consumption, which we do, which you can see we've achieved minus 20%-22% versus 2019, which showed that yes, it is possible to grow because we have grown in terms of activity since then, but at the same time reducing our energy consumption, which is obviously a virtuous cycle. Besides that, what we do is also that we replace with renewable energy. We have 35 sites today that are equipped with solar panels and wind turbines. We have also signed agreements, PPA and VPPA as an example. We have an agreement in place with EDF to be able to cover 50% of our needs in France, and we are on track of securing also new contracts that will enable us to cover 60% of our needs globally by 2026.
When it's not feasible, we will buy green electricity certificates. That is on track. We stick to that. In parallel, we continue to also improve our Scope 3 emission reduction. You can see we have achieved already this objective of -30%. Here we have to make the difference of what is upstream and downstream activity. Downstream, obviously, we move with the pace of electrification of the market. As it comes to upstream activities, there's a lot of work to be done still to embark all of our suppliers on that topic. We commit to 2025 and 2050 to be fully carbon neutral. Our ACT FOR ALL program, it's indeed a lot about carbon neutrality, but not only. It's also about caring for our employees. Safety is the first topic that we address. I mentioned that earlier.
We have achieved a pretty very impressive objective. It's the first time that we reached this level in terms of FR2. And the good news is that all BGs, it's pretty homogenous. All BGs have achieved are below the one FR2 objective of 2024. So strong commitment because we know, yes, it's about procuring this safe environment, but it's about being excellent and being performant. And that obviously supports that. Our purpose is driving a new generation. And by generation, we mean also embarking new skills and new generation and attract new people. And we have put for the last years a strong emphasis on being able to recruit apprentices and trainees. We had the objective of 1,300, and we are almost at this objective that we will maintain in the years to come.
When it comes to diversity, overall good performance, again, 31% of the group is represented by women, which is a bit slightly above our objective. But again, here, a bit of mixed position. We really have to work now on how we can promote those women among the hierarchical ladder because obviously, like in many instances, unfortunately, still yet, the more you climb this ladder, the less women we have. It's part of one of the priorities that we have for 2025. Now, quick update, as you said, on the strategy. Our objectives have not changed. They are still the same for the last years. Based on three pillars that you have here on this slide, the first one about being leaders in terms of technology because our strategy is to promote new products that provide safer, more connected, and cleaner products to the market.
Besides that, the second pillar, diversifying our customer portfolio. You have seen this tremendous shift among the OEM, our customer universe. There's a lot of disruption that is taking place, and we have to adapt in terms of product portfolio to this reality. And also, we want to diversify in terms of market application. Our name now is OPmobility. And by mobility, we mean also addressing new market application that goes beyond the passenger car. And last but not least, we refer to the situation in Europe, and we want to have a more balanced share of revenues that are in North America, in Asia, to be able to capitalize more on those pockets of growth to come in the future. To do so, innovation still remains a very important lever to reach those objectives, not the only one, but a strong one.
And we have done in 2024 a lot. We have seen new opportunities. The first one, we organized this MIT symposium with the MIT School focused on AI. Here, it was the opportunity for us to bring our people, but also people from this whole ecosystem to really try to kind of sort what is the hype of AI and what are those business cases that make sense for us and that we can embark within the group for, I would say, our own transformation, but also to embark that in coming up with new product offers to the market. And you have here some examples of those either startup or not startups anymore that are helping us in supporting that. If I take Neural C oncept, for instance, it's about using AI to be faster and more efficient in terms of product design.
Also, Natus, which is AI for optimizing the position of those actuators that we have on the car, so a lot of opportunities that we want to embark in this new product portfolio, and we have kicked off the year being present at the CES in Vegas with a very nice booth that gave us the opportunity to meet a lot of those new mobility players and also to show, to launch this One4you offer that is really important for us, that is a strong strategic initiative where we want to push hard in 2025.
Because this One4you offer, it's about using the most of the synergies possible of our three BGs that are on this Exterior segment, which are Exterior, Lighting, and Modules, which is for us a great opportunity to seize the opportunity of those cars being more connected, so being on these growth segments and also that are giving us a way to balance against the other segment that is more exposed to the electrification of the passenger car market in general. So solid basis for us in terms of opportunities and balancing our two segments. So One4you is clearly quite unique on the market today because it's about how integrating more and more functions into these big Modules. Today, we have a roadmap based on three levels.
The level one, which is the actual level where we already have some opportunities yet to be produced with illuminated panel, but that's only the first very short-term step. We are coming up with a product offer that will enable us to really differentiate ourselves to the customer and themselves to the market. And that's where we want to bring this value to how to integrate that better. So yes, it's a product that can differentiate themselves in terms of brand, but also obviously being more competitive because better integrated, less costly. So strong push with this solution to come in 2025. When it comes to the Powertrain segment, here again, we are in a position where we can accompany all of our customers in this shift to electrification. And we can offer ICE solution, H2 solution, and electrified solution.
So we can really maneuver through this non-linear evolution of the transition, which is again a great differentiating aspect for us. And also to attack those markets that are outside the passenger car market because the E-Power and H2-Power activities are mainly serving today heavy-duty and train customers. So that's a great plus for OPmobility. While at the same time, C-Power is also still benefiting from the slowdown on the heavy market and this rise of the PHEV that will be longer in terms of transition. And here again, it gives the opportunity to C-Power to supply more products in the years to come.
Thank you, Félicie. Félicie mentioned the fact that also geography is for sure important for us, diversification. I will just highlight very shortly what we are doing in each geography.
For you, as an information, in 2020, we had 54% of our revenue in EMEA, and last year it was 50%, and it will be less in the coming years because, as mentioned already before, we are pushing hard to overperform the market in Asia and in North America. That is also happening in the order book because in the order book of OPmobility in 2024, we had two-thirds of the order book outside of Europe, which is again demonstrating that we will grow faster outside of Europe than in Europe. If we talk about EMEA shortly as well, you know that the market is basically declining since some years, -17% in production for the complete EMEA region. We have been able to grow in this market.
We have been able to grow and we will continue to be able to maintain or to reinforce our position in this market. The market is for sure very strongly impacted by the regulation, by the electrification and everything you know perfectly and the certain uncertainty I would like to say. But nevertheless, in 2024, we were stable compared to 2023 because we are gaining market share. That means we are gaining market share with our traditional customers in Exterior, in Lighting, in Powertrain, and in Modules as well. The market will consolidate. There are, I would say, too many players in a constraints market, and normally the ones being the biggest and the strongest will consolidate the market, which is happening right now in most of the countries in Europe.
Therefore, we are confident in our capacity to gain market share and to maintain a high level of activity in Europe and to try as much as possible to use the footprint we have in Europe. For Powertrain, it's the same, meaning that we are gaining market share, but for sure, the market in C-Power for combustion engine is decreasing because of the electrification. We are gaining market share, as I mentioned, but we are adapting as well our footprint. We closed two factories last year, one in Germany, one in France, and we are producing now most of our fuel tanks in Eastern Europe for competitive reasons, and we will continue to adapt depending on the development and the pace of the development of the full electrification. Another topic we are investing in is for sure the battery system for railway electrification.
Félicie mentioned as well the fact that we want to develop new kind of mobility. That is a business which is still small, but which is growing at OPmobility. And H2 power, even if the hydrogen business is being delayed by around two years, we have a very strong order book. We are booking new orders, and we will continue to develop H2 power, not with the same investment level than expected in the past. That means we are adapting that, but mainly focusing on our factory in France, which we are going to open this year. And out of France, we will deliver Europe, but also North America in the first stage.
If we move to North America, which is, as mentioned before, a completely different market, much less constraints in terms of regulation, therefore much more opportunities for growth in the future, but also lower market share for OPmobility in this market compared to Europe. Therefore also as well, a strong opportunity to grow. And our target here is pretty simple. We want to grow in all our businesses. We want to grow in Exterior and Lighting because, again, we have huge opportunities to gain market shares with traditional players, but also with new EV players in the U.S., having a different approach and offering us the opportunity to work on the One4you topic Félicie was mentioning. In Modules, for sure, our Austin factory is bringing us some growth. We have been growing in 2024, even if the volumes were a bit lower than expected.
That was a strong push in terms of growth, and we will continue to grow as well in this factory in 2025, and we have been able also to gain new contracts with new EV players. Therefore, module will grow in North America in the coming years as well. In Powertrain, for sure, you know that the pace of electrification is not the same like what we have in Europe. Therefore, we are confident that in the coming years, there will be still many combustion engines in North America being used. Félicie was mentioning that hybrid PHEV is developing a lot, is developing as well in North America, and we are continuing to consolidate the market. In the U.S., our market share is more than 50% for the fuel tanks.
When we say we are consolidating the market, that means not only with GM, Stellantis, and Ford, but also Toyota. Therefore, our ambition here in the coming years is to grow as well in the C-Power business in North America. Therefore, that will be for us the growth engine of the company. If we come to Asia, we start shortly with China. China is not so visible in our numbers because a big part of our activity in China is a joint venture we don't consolidate. Therefore, you may not see it as it is, but we have 37 factories in China. We are a market leader in Exterior parts with our joint venture, YFPO. YFPO is a joint venture with the group Yanfeng belonging to the SAIC group.
We are still number one in China for these Exterior parts with around 22% of market share for bumpers, for tailgates. Since some years, our joint venture, YFPO, is adapting to the new market condition. Our historical customers, meaning all the customers of the SAIC group, are for sure losing market share, as you know that, the Volkswagen, SAIC, GM, and so on. But we have been able to gain new customers, the winners of the transformation in China. And even if it's not so visible right now in our numbers because these are new contracts, our biggest order intake in 2024. They were with BYD, but also with Huawei. Therefore, we are confident and in the future, we will be able to adapt and to follow the market for the YFPO activity. For your information, last year, the YFPO was growing by 2.5%, therefore slightly below the market.
And as mentioned before, for BYD, for Huawei, now we are working more and more with them. For BYD, it's mainly for tailgate. They still produce their bumpers internally, but for tailgate, they go 100% to plastic, and they do that with us because they don't have the capacity to do it internally. Modules is a smaller activity in China. We have traditional customers like Mercedes not performing very well, as you may know, but we are also developing new EV players in China. C-Power is suffering in China because of the electrification. That is pretty logical. The addressable market is reducing. We have adapted our footprint by closing factories in China to be more competitive. But we do see right now opportunities with the development of the PHEV, our range extender. That means also a combustion engine. That means also fuel tanks.
And we have more and more opportunities with, I would say, Chinese OEMs willing to use our plastic technology for those kinds of combustion engines where they are coming for plastic. Therefore, also for C-Power, we believe we will be able to stabilize or even to grow in the coming years compared to the situation of today. And for sure, we are still working on hydrogen with our partner, Shenergy Group, a big company in Shanghai. And we do see hydrogen coming in China as well for commercial vehicles in the coming years. Therefore, China, very important market for us. We want to follow the market. We don't want to be dependent on this market, which I believe is also on long term very important. The rest of Asia is also very strong at OPmobility. 16 factories, you can see our footprint here. It's a growing market as well.
We want to outperform this market. We want to outperform this market for all the business groups. We are very strong in India already. In India, we have more than 50% of the market share for C-Power, and we are very strong in Exterior. We are opening a new factory in India this year again to continue to grow and to outperform the market. A factory basically for Exterior parts, and you can see the customers here, but also being used in the future for C-Power. We believe that India will offer us a lot of opportunities, also potentially with Modules. The rest of Asia is a very strong market for C-Power, for the combustion engine business, but also Korea is a very strong market for the module activity. We have a very successful joint venture there.
We don't consolidate as well, but growing, gaining market share, being focused on Hyundai and Kia. Therefore, the rest of Asia, it's a big market. We say rest of Asia, but all those countries, they do represent a very strong opportunity for the group to outperform the global market.
So again, coming back on one of our key topics, which is customer diversification, I think we all learned in 2024 that in that respect, ups and downs on the customer side can be very fast versus what it used to be in the past. So our capacity to adapt to that also will be key in the years to come. So obviously, we want still to reinforce a lot our historical relationship with OEMs and be for them a partner of choice and in new products.
But also, it is very important for us to increase our penetration with new players. So you have here a list of those new players. And today, we are happy to say that when you look at China, almost half of our sales are with new players. So we have to now capitalize on this relationship and also be able to accompany them in their reflection in setting their footprint in Europe and elsewhere. So that will be a key focus for us. And at the same time, obviously, electrification is a great opportunity for us to address those new market applications that are heavy duty and trucks with the E-Power and H2-Power activities. You have here again some of the big names that we have been able to see in terms of opportunities in the last year.
We continue to really leverage that to find, to deploy this growth, these revenues with non-passenger car automotive players.
Thank you, Félicie. It's time to come to the conclusion. We wanted to make it in 45 minutes. We will make it in 45 minutes. Starting first of all with the fact that we have posted very solid numbers in 2024. You saw that we are improving all the financial KPIs. And therefore, yesterday, the Board of Directors decided to propose to the shareholder meeting, which will happen in April this year, a dividend of EUR 0.60 per share, which means an increase or an improvement of 54% compared to the previous year. Again, highLighting the fact that we are all very satisfied from our results in 2024, very confident in our strategy, in our capacity to continue to outperform the market and to improve our financials.
We have a strong support from our shareholders, and that is normal that we are increasing the dividend in 2024 compared to the previous year. Just for you as an information, but I know you, I'm sure you know that in the last 10 years, OPmobility was always able to pay a decent dividend to its shareholders, and that is for sure our intention to continue to do so in the coming years based on our very solid performance. Now, when we talk about 2025, starting with the market, the market is expected to be flattish. That is at least what S&P is doing, is saying, but S&P is also changing its mind pretty often. We believe that is what we think. It should be flattish in terms of volumes.
There are still a lot of uncertainties, a lot of volatility, which are mainly driven by regulation, by what's happening in Europe with the CAFE 2025. There is still a big question mark about what will be the decision, which we will know at the beginning of March. For sure, what's happening with the U.S. tariff discussion, which is pretty volatile. Therefore, all in all, we think the market may be flattish. It will be for sure very diverse by geography, by customers, depending on what will happen on those two topics and other topics. Our target, our ambition in 2025 is to continue and even to accelerate what we have been doing the last years, meaning to continue to develop our strategy, again, based on the pillars, technology, geography, and customer diversification to be more balanced in everything we do.
Continue to work very hard on using our industrial capacities as much as possible and working on our cost structure. That is also something we have been able to do in the last years and we will continue to do in the coming years. Having a strong focus on performance and competitiveness. Competitiveness, it concerns everything in purchasing, in supply chain, in R&D as well. We have a lot of initiatives on that. That means really making the company even more efficient and competitive that we are today in order to continue to gain market share and to invest for the future. In terms of financials for 2025, our target, our ambition, our commitment is to improve all the financial KPIs, meaning the operating margin, which will be higher than 2024, meaning higher than EUR 440 million.
The net result, which will be in 2025, higher than 2024, meaning higher than EUR 170 million. And the free cash flow, which will be in 2024, higher than the one of 2025, sorry, higher than the one of 2024, meaning higher than EUR 246 million. That means we continue, we invest, we improve all the financial KPIs. That is our target for 2025 in a market which should be flattish and which has for sure, as you all know, some uncertainties right now, but we manage our costs, we manage our results, and we will be able to face all the scenarios.
As a conclusion, again, I want to use the opportunity to thank the OPmobility team because they have been doing a fantastic job in 2024 by managing the short term, meaning being agile, working on our cost structure, working on our efficiency, but also without forgetting that we need to prepare the company for this fantastic transformation happening outside, meaning to invest in technology, in footprint, in new customers, and we have been able to do that, to balance both with a solid growth, market outperformance. All the key financial metrics are better than in 2023, and again, without compromising on the future, that is important for us. We want to continue to grow and to outperform the market. We are successful in the diversification strategy. You have seen the geographies.
You have seen that we have new customers as well in automotive and outside of automotive in the rest of the mobility. We are on track and we stick always to our commitment to achieve our commitments for 2025 in terms of carbon neutrality for Scope 1 and 2. And we start 2025 with a lot of confidence in our capacity to continue to outperform the market and to improve our financial KPIs while gaining market share and preparing the future. Many thanks for your attention. And now we move to the Q&A session. And we start in the room for the ones being in the room. And we start with you, Thomas.
Thank you all. I have a lot of questions. So I don't know if you prefer them one by one or all together.
All together, the advantage.
I don't need to answer all of them because you don't remember all the questions before. No, maybe all together, please.
All together. Okay. So I have a few easy questions. Can you speak about the drivers of 2025 outperformance in terms of businesses and geography? Are we going to talk about mostly Modules and North America as in 2024? Or is something else going to take the relay? Second question, could you give us even a vague idea of the expected evolution of revenues and contribution to adjusted EBIT from Lighting and also give us some vague indications of what it was in 2024 in terms of revenues and probably small losses? Thirdly, could you talk about the expected seasonality for 2025? I think the year starts quite, let's say, it's a challenge in terms of automotive production in Q1.
What do you expect in terms of H1 versus H2? The last couple of years have been very skewed to H1. Is it going to be different this time? Then a pure analyst modeling question. What should we expect in terms of financial expenses, tax rates, and CapEx for 2025 as a proportion of revenues versus 2024? And I have one last question, which is a lot more difficult. On the strategic view on potential participation of consolidation, you've talked about the fact that you're gaining share and that effectively automakers are helping the industry getting there. But clearly, a number of companies are going to die on the way. Or let's say it's going to become a lot more complicated for some of your competitors. You're much stronger, but still relatively leveraged. Can you discuss the company's view on the potential participation?
Is there a requirement by automakers or voluntary to consolidating some of your peers? And what would be the preferred area geographically or in terms of businesses if you were to participate in something like that? Thank you.
I'm not sure that the last one was the most difficult, but.
I thought it was.
No, because the last one, it depends on us. The other topics you mentioned is the market. That's much more. Sometimes it's a lot of questions. Now, if we talk about 2025, our target is in terms of key financial metrics is to improve all the businesses compared to 2024. Therefore, it's really important for us as a strategy. We talk about always being balanced.
It's also the target that each business group is improving in 2025 compared to 2024 in terms of profitability, in terms of free cash flow generation, in terms of net result. Regarding the top line in 2025, you mentioned that last year module was boosting our growth. Module should continue to grow pretty fast in 2025. But we believe that the Exterior business group will also grow in 2025, while Lighting should be more or less stable compared to 2024. C-Power, we see stable, potentially a slight decrease, but it depends on many topics. But the growth should come from Exterior and from Modules in 2025. And in terms of geographies, the biggest growth should come from North America in 2025. Again, everything depends on topics. We don't know, but that is as of today what we believe, and we are pretty confident on that.
Lighting, we said last year that the Lighting in 2024 will have a difficult year in terms of sales because of what Stéphanie mentioned before, the order book, which was not very strong before the acquisition. It was the case in 2024 because the sales were decreasing compared to 2023 by 24%. We said 20%-25%. That was our information to you. It was 24% in the Lighting in 2024 compared to 2023. We have been able to work a lot on the break-even point of Lighting. We reduced the headcount by close to 20% also in the Lighting business. It's part of the restructuring cost Stéphanie was referring to and other actions on Lighting. We had some losses in 2024. Our target was to be like 2023.
It was a bit worse in 2024 than 2023, but I would say similar, not big differences compared to 2023, thanks to everything we have been doing in terms of cost structure adoption in SG&A in our factories and so on. The second semester was weaker than the first semester in terms of sales in the Lighting because, again, that is due to the order intake. What we mentioned before is the order book is pretty strong, EUR 3 billion. We limit the order book to what we can digest. That is not being limited by the market.
That means there are opportunities on the market we don't capture because we want to focus on a balanced market in terms of geographies, in terms of customers, but also to have good profitability of what we book and also to be able to digest, meaning to launch the product safely and also to be able to finance the investment as well. And that is the way we are adapting the order book target to the situation of the Lighting. The first semester of 2025 in Lighting in terms of sales should remain pretty weak, like the second semester of last year. And then we have many launches started at the second semester of 2025, which is for us a challenge, but a very positive challenge. And as Stéphanie mentioned, 2026 should see the first year of recovery in terms of top line of Lighting.
That is where we want to break even also in terms of operating margin, thanks to this growth, thanks to the synergies with this new business group, Lighting and Exterior together. That is our target, and then from 2026 onwards, we will continue to grow. In terms of operating margin, middle, long term, we target similar operating margin in Lighting than what we have in Exterior. In terms of seasonality, H1, H2 2025, we believe Q1 will be pretty weak in 2025. That is what we see in January. You have seen that S&P saying January minus 7% worldwide volumes. We believe that Q1 will be pretty weak for many reasons. Therefore, this year, H1, H2 may be more balanced than we had in the past.
I cannot tell you exact numbers right now because we don't know, but I think it will be more balanced between H1 and H2 than what we had in the past due to the fact that Q1 is pretty weak in the worldwide production. CapEx, 2025, we always target to be at around 5% or below 5%. That is the way we are managing the company. And that is the way we want also to continue to do it in 2025. Therefore, here as well, 2024 was 4.8%, if I'm right, Stéphanie. And 2025 should be around 5% in terms of CapEx, which is always a challenge because we have a lot of opportunities for getting new business, but which is very, very, I would say, very healthy in terms of maintaining a good free cash flow and also for the future.
Tax, I think similar or below 2024 in 2025. Consolidation, M&A, what you said is when we talk about consolidation, we talk about the fact that there is overcapacity on the market. And if there is overcapacity, the consolidation is not being done with M&A activities. It's just being done because some of the players are not able to resist anymore. Therefore, we don't have any intention to consolidate the market by acquisition. We have the target to consolidate the market with our customers for them to have less players, but stronger players. And that is what we are doing on the C-Power, I was mentioning. That is what is happening in some geographies in Exterior as well, where some players are suffering from the last years, basically, and not able to follow anymore.
Therefore, the consolidation we are talking about is consolidation by using the capacities we have and by using our factories and so on, but not with M&A.
Yes, hi, Michael Foundoukidis, ODDO . A few questions also on my side. So first one, and maybe a follow-up of what you just said, could you explain to us or give us more color regarding the key profitability drivers for 2025 in terms of margins? I mean, what do you see as supporting the margin improvement? What do you see as having potentially a negative impact? Anything specific? Second question on tariff. Any insight you could share regarding your clients asking you to be prepared maybe for a short-term disruption, like one week, two weeks, building inventories, these kinds of things, or maybe starting discussions for longer-term supply chain change? So that's the second question.
Third question, more on technology and on power trains. I mean, you spoke a lot about PHEVs, but you did not speak about extended range EVs. Anything you could share regarding the content for you, what it means in terms of size of the tank, maybe, or technology? Anything different versus PHEVs? And maybe back to finance. On dividend policy, I mean, should we expect this 50% payout as the new policy of the group? And in this respect, should we expect another interim dividend this year? And second question, maybe on financial leverage. Could you quantify a bit more the ambition for 2025 besides just an improvement after a year of stabilization in 2024? Thank you.
Also, many questions. Some of them more difficult than the others.
Margin 2025 compared to margin 2024, as we don't expect the market to grow in 2025, the margin will be done by efficiency and competitiveness. Therefore, in 2024, we had lower SG&A than in 2023. I give you an example. We had lower SG&A in 2024 compared to 2023, and we will have even lower SG&A in 2025 compared to 2024. That is an example. Not only that, we have been working on structure costs in our factories. We launched a pretty strong initiative at the second half of 2024 to reduce the number of indirect people in our factories, in most of our factories, and we should benefit from that in 2025. That means the main topics to answer to your question, Michael, are really linked to performance, cost structure, fixed cost, this management.
That will be, I would say, the biggest leverage we have to improve our key financial metrics in 2025 compared to 2024. That means everything which is related to cost, basically. And what we are doing with the Lighting and Exterior as well is exactly in this trend as well. Tariffs with customers. Frankly speaking, there are so many announcements in the last weeks, and nobody knows that we have been working on scenarios with some of them. Most of them, they told us, "Don't move, don't do anything because nobody knows. Please maintain the supply chain and don't overreact." And therefore, there are scenarios, I would say, in case of, but there is nothing. There is no action being taken right now, except what we are doing since some years, that we want to be as local as possible. Therefore, compare maybe to other players.
OPmobility, for the production we have in the U.S., most of the components we have are being produced in the U.S. We are purchasing in the U.S., and we are pushing hard to be more and more local U.S. for U.S., not to be dependent on tariff. That means there is nothing coming from the customers, only from us to continue to do what we are always doing, meaning that we are very local supply chain and we are not depending on that, which is the best to be protected in any scenario. Range extender, that is a technology we do see developing. As you know, it's mainly coming from China, and now most of the European or American OEMs as well are willing to develop range extender. For us, it's similar to a PHEV tank.
These are tanks out of plastic, reinforced because they have to adapt to different pressure, but they are similar. In terms of size, it depends also, but not a big difference compared to a PHEV. Therefore, a nice opportunity for us because when they launch range extender, they keep a traditional combustion engine. Therefore, you have two developments. You have opportunities also in terms of pricing. For us, it's good, and we believe range extender, especially in North America for some pickup and for some big SUVs, it will be a nice opportunity for OPmobility in the coming years. Dividend policy. There is no dividend policy at OPmobility. There is a dividend decision depending on the situation of the company. And the situation of the company is very healthy in terms of result, depending on the situation of the market. And then we adapt to that.
I showed you before that since 10 years, we are always paying dividend. Therefore, there is no policy on that. There is not only a common decision with the board, with the shareholder about what is adapted to continue for the company to invest because we want to invest and to create value on long term, as we have been always doing, to continue to grow, but also to honor our shareholders for the support they are bringing to us. In terms of leverage, we were at 1.7 at the end of last year, and we will be lower at the end of this year. Clearly, that is the target. We don't give any clear target on that, but the EBITDA should be higher in 2025 than in 2024. The debt will be lower in 2025 compared to 2024.
And I'm sure that you will make a model which will be close to what we are expecting to achieve. No question in the room? Then we have online.
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Michael, you have another question?
Yeah, sorry. Maybe one just follow-up.
We discussed it a bit, but on hydrogen and how do you see the market evolving, I mean, in the different regions and your order book? I mean, maybe you have some delays, but do you see some cancellations? And how do you adapt to that in terms of spending and any color of what should we expect in 2025 and 2026 in this regard in terms of P&L and cash impacts?
Hydrogen, I mean, we have no doubt that hydrogen will come for heavy mobility, for trucks, for commercial vehicles. The speed of development of hydrogen is not the one we expected. It's like the electrification, basically, for many reasons. It's infrastructure, it's investment, and so on, subsidies as well. Therefore, we are adapting to that. Regarding the market, your question, there is no cancellation of orders.
We even booked new orders recently with another truck maker out of Northern Europe. We cannot mention right now. And we know that all truck makers are going to hydrogen. They will all combine either combustion engine, battery, and hydrogen in the future to have the right mix to achieve the targets they have to achieve, and depending on the utilization of the other vehicles. But there is no truck maker not working on hydrogen with concrete plan for serial production latest in 2030. Therefore, there is no consolation on that. But we were expecting that to come a bit earlier. That was the information we had from those customers, and that is getting delayed by around two years. What are we doing to adapt to that? First of all, we continue to gain market share to be very dominant.
I would like to say that, especially in the storage system for hydrogen, we are developing not only the truck business, but the railway business, and we had nice successes last year with Alstom, with Stadler in Europe, but also CRRC in China and in Asia, and for sure, in terms of investment, in terms of industrial capacity, we are slowing down compared to what we were intending to do. We have stopped the activity in the U.S. in terms of construction of a new factory. You know that we wanted to build a factory in the U.S. for GM. GM is maintaining its ambition for hydrogen, but it's being delayed, and we will deliver GM out of our factory in France. The same for another customer, a German customer for passenger car producing SUVs with hydrogen in the U.S. We will also deliver out of France.
Therefore, we are concentrating the footprint not to overinvest in hydrogen out of France and using the most capacity we are installing in France right now. We have another capacity in place for Korea, for Hyundai in Korea, which is starting to produce right now. And in China, and in China as well, we were intending to double the capacity, but we are postponing that. Therefore, you see, we are not stopping. We are just adapting, but like we have to do, like the market is doing, to the reality of the market, which is a delay of around two years for hydrogen. We are doing the same as well in project development.
That means we also reduce the headcount, the number of people we have in the hydrogen activity, again, to adapt to that and to reduce our spending compared to what we had previously in our plan for the coming years. But to your question, there is no conclusion from that. And again, all truck makers are going to hydrogen, but also other kinds of mobility. In terms of investment, it will be lower than expected for the coming two years. In terms of free cash flow, it should be better than what we did expect in the past. Therefore, we are adapting. And in terms of top line, you can assume that there is a delay of around two years as well for hydrogen activity.
Thank you. I have two follow-up questions as well, very quickly. I would just like to understand, to clarify what you said about Lighting breakeven.
Lighting breakeven is in 2025 or in 2026, firstly. And then hydrogen breakeven, when is this? Now, is this like 2027, 2028? So that's the first question about some activities that are still waiting on the group profitability. And the second, you largely improved the module margins in H2 in 2024. Where do you see the potential? Is it 2.5? Is it 3? I mean, it's quite meaningful because it's also waiting on group margins, maybe voluntarily to make sure you don't look too strong from the outside. But so where is the potential for this business?
Well, I see my chairman smiling when it's not too sure that we are too strong. And I see the CEO of the module business struggling with the answer I will give on profitability target.
No, it was really a good performance to, I would say, to fix the issues we had, to work on efficiency as well, and with our customers to come back to, I would say, a decent margin on module. We always say that this business, based on the cost structure we have, is around 3% margin potential in module, as Stéphanie mentioned before. We have close to 88%-90% material cost, products we buy, we purchase, which are being most of them developed and purchased by our customers. And therefore, the prices are fixed. And the rest is up to us to organize better, meaning the logistics, the supply chain, but also the assembly and to work on efficiency. And we believe the margin, we don't have a look on the margin on added value, but the margin on sales, we target 3%.
It's very low CapEx, also intensive module because we have CapEx which are below 2% as well. Therefore, for the market, it's maybe not always very clear, but as an investor, it's a good business because you have low CapEx and you have a decent cash generation, low risk, and it brings a lot of customer intimacy as well. We are very close to the customers because if you make Modules, you are really at the center of their way to assemble, to develop their cars, their make-or-buy, and that opens doors as well to different businesses as well. Therefore, target for Modules potential is 3% margin, and we want to achieve that in the coming years, and we are focusing also on good margin Modules. In terms of Lighting, we said that the breakeven will be in 2026.
2025 is first semester weak in sales, and then we should see the first effect of the launches. You have three years between when you book orders and it comes in sales. The target is in 2026 because we will have the first growth in Lighting since the acquisition, and we will benefit 100% from the fact that we have decided to bring Modules, Lighting, and Exterior together. Therefore, there will be also synergies in terms of cost. We are targeting 2026. Hydrogen, it depends on the market speed. I won't give you a clear year. It depends on the speed of the market in terms of adoption of hydrogen.
Again, the target for us is for sure to continue to work on that because we strongly believe it will come and that will be a strong asset for the company, but to adapt our expenses to the speed of the development of the market. We have questions on the chat.
We have three questions from Steve Pereira Fernandez from Bernstein. The first question is: Can you speak about the other operating profit line as it relates to the software? It was positive in 2024 after negative in 2023. The second question is: Do you expect material cost inflation in 2025? And the third question is: Are you relying on any OEM compensation in 2025? Thank you.
So, software, we have 150 people in software at OPm obility. Some of them are in France, some of them are in India.
They are located where it makes sense, and they are working 100% for the business groups. Therefore, we don't sell software to our customers. We sell software to ourselves because if you make Lighting, you need software. If you make a fuel cell system, you need software and so on. Therefore, these are internal businesses, and the profit you may see, that is internal profit, basically. There is nothing else, and we have those 150 people working mostly for internal purpose. Long term, we may have opportunities to sell software as a service for maintenance topics, for example, or for other topics. But really, as mentioned before, it's about the needs we have for our business groups, for Lighting, for Hydrogen, for Battery System. Material cost inflation in 2025. As of today, we don't expect to see inflation in 2025.
But as I said, everything is pretty volatile on the market. The good point is that we have with our customers, we have a condition with pass-through for material cost. Therefore, we don't depend on material cost inflation right now. That is a thing which has been fixed after all the inflation topics we had in the recent years. We don't see it, but we are anyway protected in case of. And do we rely on negotiation with our customers? We always rely on our customers as they rely on us as well. The question is always the volumes. That is the topic.
We have been pretty successful last year to find ways with them from one side to continue to develop the business with them because it's a target on long term, but also to add some compensation on volumes for the vehicles being postponed or being very far away from the volume expectation. For sure, depending on the volume situation this year, we will continue. I think we don't have any question anymore. I thank everybody here in the room, everybody connected for your attention, for the question. I wish you a fantastic day. Many thanks also to the OPmobility team. Thank you very much.